Nothing But The Beat
by Beast of Burton
Summary: Beca Mitchell was a lot of things. Beca/Chloe. Rated for language.


**AN:** I can't help it. I'm so excited for _Pitch Perfect 2_ that it's becoming a distraction. I wrote this a pretty soon after (You're the) Devil in Disguise, but hedged on publishing. Fortunately or unfortunately for you, I now simply must express my excitement somehow. This fits into the same little corner of the narrative world as my other stories in this fandom, but can be enjoyed on its own as well. Cheers.

* * *

**Nothing But The Beat**

* * *

Beca Mitchell was a lot of things. An unwitting college graduate. A legendary smart ass. Two precious inches away from being a legal midget.

But above all things, Beca Mitchell was a musician.

It was the one truth that had irrevocably shaped her life, from the first clumsy fumblings on her grandfather's piano all the way through the cringe-worthy, Linkin Park-heavy mixes that came out of her parents' divorce. She measured her heartbeat in an eight count. Syncopated the tapping of her pen with the regular ticking of the air conditioner. Saw the notes on the radio weaving in and out of the shadows on the road.

That last one actually tended to freak people out if she explained it wrong, so she mostly kept it to herself.

From the ripe old age of seven she was convinced that music was going to be her first, truest, and only love. It taught her everything worth knowing, after all. That change can be good or bad, but it's gonna happen whether you're ready for it or not. That silence can be meaningful, not just the sound of absence. That there were other people like her, who saw the notes on the road.

And because of those lessons, she knew by the time she was twenty-three that music might always be her first love, but it sure as hell wasn't her only anymore.

* * *

Beca wouldn't have admitted it to any of her peers, but eighteen plus nights at the club were easily her favorite shift to spin at. Some of her best memories were made on those nights when she was that age, and every now and then she'll glance out on the floor and see some kid just _lost_ in the beat and she'll feel all proud and warm in the chest, like she's passing the torch.

Or some sentimental bullshit like that. Whatever.

This was not one of those moments. It was largely her own fault, having spent the previous night (and current morning, if you wanted to get all technical) getting completely plastered at an impromptu Bellas reunion thrown together for Stacie's birthday. The absolute last thing Beca wanted in the _entire world_ was to be woken up by was the club's manager screeching through the phone that she was twenty minutes late for sound check. By ten o'clock her foul mood had dissipated into a Zen-like calm of knowing that between the subwoofers and the dehydration, she was going to die any minute of an imploded skull.

So it was more than a little surprising when the song roaring through her headphones faded to almost mute and a single, clear tone blipped in the quiet. It took her a full three seconds to remember she'd set up her phone to do that when she got a text.

Just the sight of the face that flashed up on the screen was enough to make her feel almost human again. The ensuing words pushed things all the way there, got her blood pumping hot and _alive_.

_Hey mr DJ put a record on, i wanna dance with my baby._

_Fuck_ yes, she thought, cueing up a long track labeled _LJ #9_ before ducking out of the booth. Chloe was easy to find, even in the migraine-inducing lighting. Beca still didn't know how she managed to do that playful, glinty thing with her eyes, especially when she definitely out-drank almost everyone the night before.

"Is this your way of telling me you're leaving me for one of those Madonna-worshiping freakazoids?" Chloe just smirked, moving her hands down through the air around her body.

"I've been telling you for years that all this is too much for one person to handle, Mitchell." Beca grinned at the challenge, sliding her hands around Chloe's hips, leaning into the smell of her hair and her perfume and her skin.

"You've obviously forgotten how I handle you then," she replied, letting her voice catch in the growl at the bottom of her range. Chloe went all soft and pliable at the sound, so it took just the slightest pressure on her hips to spin her around and wait for the _five, six, seven, eight_ before the first chords of the new track.

"Oh, my God; _so_ unfair," Chloe groaned as her head tilted back against Beca's shoulder.

"You're the one who wanted to dance," Beca reminded, punctuating the thought by grinding up on Chloe's back. "So _dance_."

Even the face of the death-headache, Beca was more than willing to give herself over to the beat. She lived for this moment, the one when the music turned _physical_. When it took on a shape and a heat and a smell. Except now it was even better because the smell was Beca's own laundry detergent and the heat was the same one she curled up against at night and the shape winding against her body was familiar enough to make her _salivate_.

"You know you love it when I don't play fair," she managed to breathe in Chloe's ear before everything faded into movement and sound.

* * *

Audio Technica M50s were God's gift to both lovers of high fidelity audio and people who wanted to be left the hell alone. Especially those who were trapped in the screechy, barely-upholstered-enough-to-prevent-spinal-damage seats of a high school auditorium. By the eighth inquiry of who she had for homeroom, Beca was fairly certain someone was going to die before the night was out. Just because she was a little on the vertically challenged side did _not_ give everyone free license to assume she was a damn teenager.

Seriously. If one more concerned parent made sympathetic eye contact with her, that was _it_.

_Happy thoughts_, she told herself in Chloe's voice, slowing her breathing down to a placid two count as she flicked through the library on her phone. She just needed something calm to listen to until the show started. Maybe that (mandatorily) inspiring playlist of Aubrey's from freshman year, she thought with a snort. Three tracks of that and she was usually catatonic.

"Dude, dude, _dude_!" some skinny-ass skater boy exclaimed as he went careening into the seat to her left, flailing his arms dangerously into her personal space. "You are _never_ gonna guess what I saw on Saturday night!"

"Me doing your Mom?" another kid replied. Beca rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to her phone.

"Hilarious. I have _literally_ never heard that one before. No, dude, I was at Godfrey's and I saw the choir teacher grinding up on some chick!"

"Mrs. Conklin? Gross. Bitch has grandkids, dude."

"Ew, no, not her. The new one, Ms. Beale."

"No way! Hot red-head Ms. Beale? She is _such_ a babe."

Alright, _that_ was officially enough of that. Beca had just managed to slide the headphones back down around her neck and open her mouth to put the little douche-canoes back in their place when she heard someone calling her name from the stage door a few feet down the aisle.

Chloe waved her over, bouncing on the balls of her feet the entire time. "I can't believe you came!" she squealed, all blue eyes and breathless delight, like Beca hadn't been to like eighteen of these things already.

"Duh," she replied, walking up and snagging a handful of Chloe's starched collar to pull her down into a possessive kiss. There was always something insanely hot about making out with Chloe in her work clothes. Probably had to do with all those authority issues everyone keeps telling her about.

"Knock 'em dead, nerd," she grinned against Chloe's mouth before stepping back. The wide-eyed daze that stuck around on Chloe's face as she ducked back behind the door never got old, even after the hundreds of times Beca must have seen it by now. As she walked back to her seat she noted with a smug sense of satisfaction that the loud-mouth teenagers were straight up staring at her with slack jaws.

"_Dude_," they chorused as she sat down.

She spared them a smirk before the lights went down and the first notes of the overture started to peal out of the pit.

* * *

M.I.A, that's what she needed. Something hard and driving and right on the edge of discordant to keep her pumped up and on top of her game. Now if she could just find the damn CD in the stupid, overstuffed sleeve velcroed to the visor. Fucking ancient car without an audio jack. Why the hell didn't she make enough money to afford a car from this century? Where the–

"Breathe, Bec," Chloe admonished from the driver's seat, shifting up into fifth before dropping her hand on Beca's thigh. "It's just another interview, okay? You've done this a million times."

"It's not _an_ interview, Chloe. It's _the_ interview. _The_ production company. _The_ shot," Beca huffed, glaring at a copy of _Neon Bible_ before tossing it over her shoulder into the back seat.

"Nope. It's just _a_ shot. They've happened before and they'll happen again."

"Shows what you know," Beca groused, giving up the search to seethe at the pull of the ill-fitting blazer stretched over her shoulders.

"You need to relax," Chloe said more gently, squeezing her hand around Beca's knee.

"What do you suggest, _Dr_. Beale?" Beca replied with more venom than she meant to deliver, leaving her feeling all crawly and guilty on top of everything else. But Chloe just took it in stride, narrowing her eyes thoughtfully at the road.

"Well, we _are_ running like an hour early. I could always pull over for a little therapeutic stress relief." She glanced over at Beca with a wink and a shimmy of her hips in the seat.

"My God, woman. Is sex your solution to everything?" Beca laughed incredulously, the tension already starting to edge down from its grip around her throat.

"Just eighty percent of life's problems. The other twenty is–" Chloe cut herself off with a gasp. "Singing! You should sing!"

"Chlo," Beca sighed, shaking her head.

"No, seriously! It'll help your breathing and your heart rate and get those endorphins pumping. Don't even try to fight me on this, I've got science."

When Beca didn't respond Chloe looked over again with an excited smile. "Come on. Just go with the first thing that comes to mind. Here, I'll give you a beat."

She started tapping firmly on the steering wheel. One, two, three, one, two, _three_.

_Blackbird singing in the dead of night  
Take these broken wings and learn to fly_

It was out of her mouth before she could think to stop, the words as fresh as the first time she heard them on the dusty record, the shifting rhythm echoing in her chest.

_All your life  
You were only waiting for this moment to arise_

Chloe's harmony was effortless, her voice rich and clear. It layered in perfectly, like it always did, and the nerves began to fade.

_Blackbird, fly  
Blackbird, fly  
Into the light of the dark, black night_

Each passing note eased the pressure on Beca's sternum, each measured breath left her steadier than the last. By the time the song finished they had pulled into a parking lot and Chloe was grinning at her.

"Now don't you feel better?" she asked sweetly, leaning over to click off Beca's seatbelt. It was a fight for Beca to keep the stupidly lovesick smile off her face as she twisted around to grab her laptop bag with a grudging, "Yeah, yeah."

Chloe stopped her halfway, pulling her into a long, gentle kiss that she would absolutely never admit was exactly what she needed at that moment.

"Kick ass and take names," Chloe winked. "I'll be at the Starbucks we passed a few miles back. I have a date with the _Chichester Psalms_ and an extremely large mocha."

* * *

"Pick up the pace, aca-bitches!" Aubrey shouted as she started down the stairs without looking up from her clipboard. "I didn't come all the way back to Atlanta to help you move out _late_."

"And here I thought she came just to ramp up my PTSD," Beca grumbled under her breath as she adjusted her hold on the milk crate. She yelped when a bump against her shoulder jostled the contents.

"Be nice," Chloe scolded with a poorly concealed look of deep amusement. "Unless you want to move that ridiculous vinyl collection all by your tiny self." Beca scoffed weakly, bumping Chloe back before heading into the stripped-bare kitchen.

"Jesus!" she screeched when something moved around the corner in a flash of movement.

"Oh, thank _God_. It's just Shawshank," Fat Amy sighed, collapsing dramatically against the fridge. Stacie went back to filing her nails as Cynthia Rose hopped up beside her on the counter with a bottle of beer.

"Are you guys seriously hiding in here?" Beca asked in disbelief, putting the crate down on the floor and shaking out her aching hands.

"Duh. Like we really want to bring down the wrath of Commander Posen," Cynthia Rose snorted.

"Can't do something wrong when you're not doing anything at all," Stacie added sagely, blowing on her nails.

"Why are you people even here, then?" Beca sighed, swiping the beer and taking a long pull.

"Because you said there would be pizza," a mysterious voice whispered directly behind Beca's head, promptly causing her to drop the glass bottle with an entirely-too-girly shriek of terror. Lilly just grinned and high-fived Amy, who was doubled over in laughter, as she walked by.

"Who broke something?" Aubrey yelled.

"Beca did it!" everyone shouted back.

"I hate you," Beca wheezed, still clutching her chest with one hand. "I hate every single one of you." Aubrey stormed in shortly thereafter with a list of unaccomplished tasks and the intensity of a field general. The situation quickly devolved into an aggressive rendition of _I'll Make a Man Out of You_, as stress is wont to do a group of a cappella chicks, and Beca could only lean against the counter and watch in amazement as the last of her possessions were carted out of the apartment in song.

The silence that settled in their absence was heavier than she was anticipating. This was a good thing, getting a new place to go with the new job. They had the money to, now, after all. Better neighborhood, less traffic, more space. And yet–

"Alright there, Becs?" Chloe asked from the front door with an easy smile, dust smeared over her tank top and hair curling damply around her face. Beca shook her head clear and walked across the bare floor.

"Yeah. Just...closing the book, I guess."

"My little marshmallow," Chloe murmured against her hair after wrapping her arms around Beca's shoulders, all sweat and lotion and the breezy _one_, _two_, _three_, _four_ of her heartbeat against Beca's ear. "Let's get going before the girls start eating our couch."

And just like she always had, Beca set out to follow the music home.

* * *

**AN2:** _Blackbird _is both by the Beatles, and my calm down song before interviews. The more you know.


End file.
